I thought I'd blow off some of this blog's dust today and write about Bettina Judd's reading at MC. It's been good to read poems from other times and places ("The Ballad of Mulan" and so on), but I've always liked going to readings to hear what other people are writing NOW.Bettina Judd's poetry fits in nicely with last week's readings...Robert Hayden's "Middle Passage," Muriel Ruykeser's "Absolom," and even Seamus Heaney's "The Tollund Man" and "The Bog Queen." Research is a significant part of Ms. Judd's writing process since many of her poems are about historical figures or individuals who are in the news. The first few poems that she read were from a project that she is doing on gynecological experimentation and its impact on Black women's bodies. Several were from the point of view of Joyce Heth, a slave whom P.T. Barnum had bought and exhibited as George Washington's nurse in 1835 and 1836. Barnum claimed that she was 160; Ms. Heth was actually in her 70s. (Below is a picture from a play, "The Exploitation of Joyce Heth," that was performed in New York.)
Another picture is one of Barnum's advertisements:
For more about Ms. Heth's story, see this link from George Mason University:http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/jackson/5pts/museum/heth.html
Bettina Judd also read poems about more contemporary women. One was the girl, Latasha Harlins, who was shot in the back of the head by a Korean-American store owner in 1991. The relatively light sentence that the store owner received was one of the causes of the L.A. riots in 1992. Having grown up in L.A. and its suburbs, Ms. Judd recalled the impact of Harlins' murder. She added that at the time she had seen tapes of the shooting on TV. Another startling poem was about a woman who was tortured and killed by her ex-lover. A third was about a woman who lay dying and ignored in a NYC emergency ward.
As you can see, Ms. Judd's work is about the violence of history, especially as it affects Black women. These poems are not for everyone. Curiously, she read her poems in a soft, quiet voice, swallowing her words. However, these were not poems for shouting and declaiming. I would be interested in hearing her read in a different venue...but I was glad to see how packed the room was.
Oh yes...and Ms. Judd talked about *her* approach to writing poetry. She discussed the projects that she works on. The poems about gynecological experimentation actually came out of a series of watercolors that she had been working on. She tries to write a poem a day, not worrying about whether that poem is good or bad. It is "just" a draft, and she will continue to work on it. This appears to be an approach that she has taken from the Cave Canem Poets. Here is a link to their site! (Caution: This link has been broken some of the time, so...beware!)
http://cavecanempoets.org/
Here are some links to poems by Bettina Judd. The first is "A Conversation After Teeth."
http://penzitspronouncedpants.blogspot.com/2008/08/guest-pnz-conversation-after-teeth.html
Another is her poem, "Sankofa: Gender Bend."
http://www.torchpoetry.org/Fall%2007/bettinajudd.htm
Here is her MySpace page where you may listen to her read some poems, including "Sankofa."
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=199530233
And here is a link to her blog:
http://www.ablackgirl.com/wordpress/
Next up...the Poetry at Noon for World Peace Day on 9/22!
